This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everybody. Can everybody hear me? Okay. I want to start out with a poem by Hafez. that I think is pertinent to what I want to talk about tonight. The title is With That Moon Language. Admit something. Everyone you see, you say to them, love me. Of course, you do not do this out loud.

[01:00]

otherwise someone would call the cops. Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear. Admit something. Everyone you see, you say to them, love me. Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops. Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

[02:13]

So guest season has started at Tassahara. And it used to be that the first thing that was happening actually before guest season started was Sangha Weeks. So all the people from different Sanghas would come here to sit together and practice together and see, find out if everything was moving smoothly if the kitchen was doing its job okay if the food was turning out okay if everything was working fine so they were the guinea pigs for the guest season but they were also the you know the receiver of big gifts they could come to Tassahara and we can still do that and Suzuki Roshi who started Tassahara which made Is it possible for all of us to actually sit here today?

[03:31]

We always go and visit him at his memorial site. And this time we went up the first day with Akiba Roshi and his wife and the whole group. And Akiba Roshi immediately went to the rock and there was water there and he poured water over the rock and talked in a very sweet, intimate voice. in Japanese, which I didn't understand. But he kept telling little stories to Tsukiroshi while he walked around washing the rock with the water that flowed over it. And we all sat there and spoke and said, how is it we came here? So Sangha Week is a fabulous invention because we get the best of both worlds. We get to be students in the morning, sit zazen with everybody, service soji, breakfast with the students, and then work with everybody, which makes us immediately part of the community, which is a great gift.

[04:48]

We're just part of everybody. We're working with everybody. And then at lunch we eat with the students. And in the afternoon we get to be guests. And in the evening we get to go and try out the guest dinner in the guest dining room. And we are served and we are tended to with such grace and friendliness. And people say, oh, these are the onions I chopped this morning. And these are, you know, you recognize your work. and you're happy about it, and it tastes good. And so that's what Sangha Week is doing every year for everybody, and we feel we also help Tassahara every time we come here to maintain this. So the summer season, in the winter, Tassahara is a monastic training place. So there is...

[05:54]

relatively little work, it's just maintaining the place. It's actually possible to have the winter because there is the summer in which people come who pay money to be here, to be here as guests, that can afford to be here as guests, that make it possible that this place can continue and we can have winter practice periods. So we completely give and receive. The winter and the summer are giving and receiving. So that summer practice is a practice of generosity. It's what Buddha, almost in every of his talks, he would start with the practice of generosity or say something about generosity. It's the first of the perfections

[06:54]

of the Paramitas. And in one of the stories that Aitken Roshi relates, one of the Zen masters was asked by his students, what is the gate to enter the, you know, the practice? And he said, the practice of generosity. And then the student says, well, why don't you mention all the other five, there are six Paramitas in the Vipassana or Theravada, tradition there have ten we have six they all you know kind of match together and his answer was because out of that first one all the other five come so the first one is generosity second one is morality or ethics the third one is forbearance the fourth zeal, the fifth meditation, and the sixth wisdom.

[07:57]

But the basis, the foundation for all of those is generosity. So if we think about it, the whole universe is actually giving. Another word for generosity. We have... The sun, which gives us life on this planet. But we also have the night and the moon, which help maintain the life. If we only had sun, there wouldn't be much life in a very short time. We have rain. We have plants that have seeds. We have food. The earth gives us food. So giving and generosity is going on endlessly. all the time it is so if we can be if we can remember that if we can be practicing that wholeheartedly you know we can give time energy space

[09:18]

attention, care, love, commitment, speech, silence, your ear listening, your heart being wholeheartedly in what you're doing, presence, money, teaching, I'm sure you can come up with more, so please, if something comes to your mind, just you can add it to the list. And we can give that to others, and it is as important to give that to ourselves. We can't be truly generous to anybody if we... can truly be generous to ourselves too. If we can not give all that, all those things to our own experiences, our own life, our pains and aches and sorrows and joys.

[10:35]

So there have been brain studies where they say, gave people $100 and said they could do whatever they wanted to do with them. And then they came back to the class and they kind of monitored their brains and the people told what they've been doing with the money. And they found out that the people that kept it, bought things for themselves, had some joy. kind of a little bit happy. But what was very interesting in telling was that the people who gave it all away, their joy centers, they were lit up like, you know, floodlights. They had the most joy. So giving actually creates joy in us. If we are generous, we become

[11:38]

lighthearted and joyful. We start seeing that actually, and we become open to receiving. It's a very interesting thing. It's the more we give, the more it opens us to also receive. If we're looking for receiving, we often are very closed. Because when we look for receiving, we quite normally we look for a specific something that we want to receive. And if that something comes in a slightly different form, we don't get it, we don't see it, we don't receive it. It's not the right way. But when we start to give, when we practice that kind of generosity, that doesn't mean we have to have a lot of money that we can give away. It's really all these little moments we can give a smile or a kind look or a wholehearted bow when we pass.

[12:52]

It will open us to everything. It opens our hearts and it opens all our channels. And so things can come in. When someone smiles back, it may go right. into our hearts. It may not go through the head that goes, what does she want from me? She's smiling. I'm sure she wants something from me. You know, we have all these, our heads are sometimes really complicated and are not sure if other people's motives are convinced that other people's motives are not or hidden, or different than what they present out front. But if we practice giving, we actually, our heart opens and we start seeing with our hearts rather than with our heads.

[13:54]

So Buddha says... Practicing generosity will help us to recognize the goodness in us that we thought that brought us to give a gift or to be giving. That we feel joy knowing that others benefit from our offerings. It helps us develop loving kindness and compassion and a deepening awareness of how interconnected we are, of the interconnectedness of all things. And it becomes an inter-support, a mutual support, the mutual interconnectedness and interdependence. We are also dependent on each other. This whole place works because everybody has been given a corner of it to take care of, or an aspect of it to take care of, which is giving to the whole body of this community, to the whole body of this valley, and to the whole universe.

[15:17]

Dogen says somewhere that all our practices, our practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky. Even if not noticed by us, it is so. And Hafez in another poem says, now is the time for you to know that all you do is sacred. And then at the end of that same poem he says, now is the season for you to know that everything you do is sacred. So we often think that what we do is not very special or is not worth much.

[16:23]

But if we start understanding that the smallest giving, you know, the smallest giving your attention to what you're doing actually affects the entire sky and the entire earth. And that's always so. And we can always pick it up again. When we forgot to give and when we close down and we're waiting, when we... Finally we receive something and we remember we can just start over with the next thing in front of us. Just give it our attention. Be present for it. And the Bodhisattva vow is in some ways the ultimate expression of generosity. It is... to save all beings. That is an attitude of giving which actually starts giving us a lot of joy and freedom and happiness.

[17:40]

So guest season, the guests give us money. We give the guests the results of our practice and of our labor and of our efforts. And they get to be here, experience this place, sit in the Zendo with us if they want to, go to the pool, which we maintain, And then in the winter we can close all the gates and give to our own practice and are supported by the guest season. So it goes round and round. There is a unity of giver, receiver and gift. They're not independent of each other. So you're all starting.

[18:53]

All the students here are just starting with the guest season. It's going to be a long, hot, hopefully wonderful event of practicing that together. Often also guests come and bring wonderful things, stories and what they do in their lives. When Akiba Roshi and Yoshi Sensei come down here, They give and give and give. We can go dancing with them. We can go and see calligraphy done, which really has an immediacy. There is the paper and there is the brush and there is the ink. And once the brush is on the paper, it's happening. It's just happening what's happening. How are we there for that? And that's just an image.

[19:54]

It's always like that. When you take your knife and the carrots are there, when you're there for it, when you give your whole being to it, it gives something back to you. Immediately, there is an immediate circuit of giving and receiving. Or when you make a bed, kind of always stays with me is, you know, you can sometimes start thinking, I already did five baths, why do I have to make six ones? I'm tired. So what always comes to me is Mother Teresa once was asked, how can you hold or stand all that suffering in Calcutta? All these people that are dying and you can't get to them all.

[20:57]

And her answer was, it is only one person. It is always one person. She was always just with that one person. And that one person was not number five and it was not number hundred and it was number one. And then the next one was number one. And that's how she didn't get burdened by an imagination or a reality that she couldn't do anything about. And because she couldn't do anything about the people that she wasn't there with then. And she wasn't counting how many she had done. So that is a form of giving. So it's bed number one. And bed number one.

[21:59]

My first bed today. My first bed again. So there are many ways we can practice that generosity and that is even though you think it's a generosity for for example a guest it's also immediately a generosity to yourself. Because it keeps you replenished because you will be able to pick up the energy that comes from giving yourself wholeheartedly to what you're doing. Everything we meet, the more completely we meet something, be it a feeling in us or something outside of us, Meeting gives energy back to us. It replenishes us. And that is as true.

[23:01]

So the practice is not, it's out there and only look out there. Also, it's really important to do it inwardly. To be aware of your body, to pay attention to it, to take care of it. to have a conversation with it, to find out what it needs. How do I do this job so that I don't harm myself? Because your body is your instrument. So that's a generosity. That is practicing that kind of care and attention and giving to your own experience. what Hafez is saying in his poem is also when you're missing something, when you perceive that something is missing, like understanding or care or kindness,

[24:18]

toward you that is missing how about practicing it giving it what you're missing to others it's like turning it around somebody at the city center once said well nobody's ever coming and sitting beside me when I sit there first they go to another place so I encourage the person to start going and sitting down besides other people, to do what she felt was missing. And it turned something completely, and that's what is in his horn. And it helps us because if we do what we yearn for, what we long for, if we If we do it, we actually create that feeling in us and we are not lacking it so much anymore.

[25:20]

And we don't need it so much from outside. And mostly it starts coming from outside after we do that for a little while. Admit something. Everyone you see, you say to them, love me. Of course, you do not do this out loud. Otherwise, someone would call the cops. Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying... with that sweet moon language, what every other I in this world is dying to hear.

[26:20]

So I would like to express my deep appreciation for all the work you're doing here, all the giving you're doing, all the generosity that you're just embodying and manifesting how you're doing your work in the kitchen, in the dining room, in the compost piles, in the dish shack, in the cabin crews, in the sendo, taking care of the altars, in the garden, in the shop. It is an incredible gift you're giving to the whole. universe and to everyone who comes here. And everybody in Sangha Week is always completely happy when they go home. Not happy to leave, but they go home filled with something that they get here just because you keep this place going the way you do.

[27:32]

And it's every year a little bit different and every year as incredibly wonderful and inspiring. So thank you very much and I hope you can look at each other with full moons in both of your eyes through this summer. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[28:15]

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